Rembert W. Patrick

In the following viewpoint Rembert W. Patrick asserts that the southern whites’ triumph at the end of Reconstruction led to the demoralization of the black South. According to Patrick, white southerners regained control of the South by replacing slavery with a caste system. He claims that this system demoralized southern blacks because it kept them socially, politically, and economically isolated from white Americans. Patrick argues that national support for racist views and African American leader Booker T. Washington’s support of the caste system helped extend racial inequality. Patrick, who died in 1967, was the chairman of the University of Florida’s history department and the author or editor of several history books, including The Reconstruction of the Nation, from which the following viewpoint has been excerpted.

No interpretation of American history is more inaccurate than...